All Your Base Are Belong to Us
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: [KH xover.Parody.] Cloud and Leon thought the destruction of their worlds was bad, but then, they'd never been drafted to teach Defense to Senseless English Wizarding Children by one Cunning Old Headmaster Who Should Be Shot.
1. Chapter 1

**Pairings**: None, technically; although you know it's inevitable that Cloud gets rammed with innuendo about Sephiroth. I mean, it's _almost_ _canon_ this time.  
**Summary**: (Parody) Cloud and Leon thought the destruction of their worlds was bad, but then, they'd never been drafted to teach Defense to Senseless English Wizarding Children by one Cunning Old Headmaster Who Should Be Shot.  
**Warnings**: TWT, lots of swearing, and the dragging in of bits from FF7/8. Because I can, and because I like them better than the bullshit excuse of 'Radiant Garden.' Also lots of HP crossover clichés, obviously. Unbetaed.

1. I'm not particularly interested in coming up with any in-depth plot—this is just to entertain myself. Maybe others. It's entirely possible I'll never update this again. Especially since it is, you know, a joke.  
2. As for the language barrier…Disney's American and the FF cast can speak with Sora and the Princesses just fine. There, problem solved.

* * *

**All Your Base Are Belong to Us  
_Hades' Phoenix_**

Cloud listened to Leon cursing fit to make even Cid blush. He was partial to a bit of swearing himself, though he thought the Wutai language lent itself particularly well to such exercise. It boasted no less than sixteen variations on the simple concept of 'bastard,' and calling someone a 'ShinRa' was the equivalent of, say, ritually slaughtering the entirety of the insultee's village and drinking their family's blood. For example.

"_People who say swearing's just for the unimaginative have got it all wrong,"_ Zack used to say, usually after Sephiroth gave him the Look for daring to open his mouth in public. _"It's not about looking smart, it's about mass marketing. You call a chick a 'trollop,' most people'll think you're talking about a pudding, but if you call someone a 'cock-sucking boy-humper'…well, there isn't much to misinterpret, now is there?"_

It took some time for Leon's temper to calm, just long enough for Cloud to start considering the merits of wandering off on his own. This last bit probably wasn't a good thing since, given Cloud's general state of mind, once he got lost he likely wouldn't be able to find himself again. On the other hand, getting Leon in trouble with Tifa was like watching a car crash in an action movie; it typically involved lots of explosions and property damage and resulted in severe personal injury, but was highly entertaining for everyone else.

"Problem?" Cloud inquired dryly. He didn't bother to get up from the tree-stump he'd claimed as a seat after the puddle had been wiped from its surface.

Leon shot him a Look to rival Sephiroth's, one that didn't just question his intelligence but also promised an impending doom with lots of blood and agonized screaming involved. Leon was very good at getting his message across without actually saying anything. If Cloud hadn't been such an uncommunicative asshole himself, he might've been impressed.

"The engine's shot to hell," the brunet said bluntly, turning his attention to the Gummi ship. He appeared to be attempting to bore a hole into its side with the force of his rage alone. Cloud glanced at the front of the ship, which was smeared with black goop, and mentally raised a brow. Who knew heartless could get sucked into the grill?

He bet _Sora_ had never had this problem. Nor, he doubted, had the Keyblade Master ever gotten stranded on a world that wasn't even mapped out on Cid's charts, because that sort of thing just didn't happen to heroes. Even _junior_ heroes.

"Fuck," Leon suddenly snarled from where he bent over the front of the Gummi ship, poking at the shadow-guts with the tip of his gunblade. It looked rather like a giant bug-splatter, only black instead of puke-yellow. "Some of the blocks've been cracked."

Oh, Cid was going to be _pissed_, and for once it wouldn't even be Cloud's fault. He made mental note to have Yuffie bring the popcorn when Leon tried to explain this one.

"So, we find a shop," Cloud shrugged uncaringly, standing up and thanking the Planet that he'd brought Vincent's cloak. It was _cold_. "Or a mechanic. Or a moogle."

"In case you hadn't noticed," said Leon, slowly, with the sort of careful articulation that one uses when talking to retarded people, "we're on a _hill_. And judging from the distinct lack of lights for miles, I'd say the most civilized thing nearby is the _fungus _that must've _spawned_ you."

If his voice were any icier, it would crack under its own weight.

"Then I suppose we'd best start walking," Cloud replied calmly, and then, because some things never change, he added, "Let's mosey."

"…Go die in a fucking corner."

Neither of the two men were sure how long they walked, hoping to Hyne, the Ancients, the Princesses, and the Planet—one of the men tossed in Buddha, for good measure—that they were going in the right direction. At least, not in a direction that would take them to the edge of a cliff, a giant crater, or the end of time.

When Leon darkly expressed the sentiment that it was cold enough to freeze his balls off, Cloud snidely implied the disbelief that Leon had anything of the sort to be frozen in the first place—being raised a mountain boy and having more mako than blood didn't give him much empathy for his fellow humans. This led to inappropriate suggestions concerning Cloud, a certain General with a severe Oedipal disorder, and various complex combinations of the two, which eventually resulted in Leon's black eye and Cloud's bruised ribs.

Since logically freezing or starving to death in a vast rainy wilderness was too mundane an end for seasoned warriors like these two, the sky was just beginning to lighten by the time they caught the first sign of civilization, and with a respectable minimum of fist-fighting as well.

The sign wasn't a literal one declaring where they were, which wouldn't have mattered to someone who didn't even know what world they were on in the first place. Nor was it warm light from a cozy little village, where everyone knew one another and kept the hearth-fires burning to welcome weary travelers with hand-knitted blankets.

It was a drunk. He was passed out face-first in the mud, which made Cloud—the man with the highest record of having seizures at the _worst_ possible times—cringe in sympathy. He wore strange clothing that might have been like Organization XIII's long coats, or might have been a dress, and in his senseless hand he clutched a bottle like it was a teddy bear.

While Cloud silently mused on what it meant that their first meeting with the natives of this world involved a drunkard, Leon was tugging the bottle from the man's grasp and investigating the label. It had the sharp, square-ish lettering that belonged to the language he remembered the Princesses of Heart speaking in, quite unlike the more elegant chicken-scratches of Radiant Garden.

"'Fire Whiskey,'" he read aloud. He glanced at Cloud, and when he received a shrug he brought the glass to his nose and took a whiff. Then he dropped it as a coughing fit convulsed his body and flames seemed to engulf his nostrils. Cloud snorted and kicked the bottle away, waiting for Leon's eyes to stop streaming.

"Let's just trail this guy back to whatever shit-hole he crawled out of," he muttered, glowing eyes following the footprints that zigzagged crazily in the mud.

xxx

As proprietor of the Hog's Head, Aberforth was used to seeing less-than-savory types wander in and stagger out. As far as he could tell these two newbies weren't nearly as strange as some of his regulars, but there was something about them that his experienced eye couldn't help but stare at.

"And what can I be gettin' you two?" he asked as the men approached his bar counter. He was careful to keep his voice casual without being _too_ friendly; never knew what might set people off these days, what with all the hysteria flying about after the recent break-in at the Department of Mysteries and the Dark Lord's resurrection. Bad for business, that one.

"…We're looking for a mechanic," said the taller one, a brunet wearing indecently tight leather. Youth fashion nowadays, Aberforth sighed, nothin' but kids parading around with their arses hanging out to be gawked at. Not like the good shapeless robes of _his_ day, thank you very much, people actually had _dignity_ then.

"A mechanic, eh? Whatever for?" They couldn't be Muggles, considering all the repelling charms around Hogsmeade. Could be Squibs, but what kind of non-Muggle asked for a mechanic?

"Our transportation broke down," the leather-wearing brunet said in such a way that told the experienced barkeep to shut the hell up and stop asking stupid questions if he valued his limbs. He had a slight accent that Aberforth couldn't describe.

"Well, if it's brooms yer havin' problems with, there's a repair shop down in Diagon Alley, or Knockturn Alley if it's flying carpets." Illegal, of course, but that didn't stop some people. He couldn't know that the men's strange expressions came from thoughts of Mickey Mouse-enchanted broomsticks and Aladdin's bad-tempered carpet. "'Course, you could always Apparate. Efficiency over style, _I _always say."

He pointedly eyed the taller one's obscene trousers.

"It's an airship," said the stranger with visible irritation. Aberforth was starting to wonder if the short blond one swathed in a red cloak was mute or deaf or something—with the way his weirdly bright eyes were constantly flitting about the place like a paranoid mosquito, one couldn't be too careful.

"Airship?" Images of inflatable pirate ships sailed across his thoughts.

"Do you know a mechanic or not, old man?" the blond one suddenly snapped in a low voice with tightly-leashed violence. Aberforth resolutely told himself that the sudden shaking in his knees was arthritis as his hand crept towards the wand stuck through his belt.

"No, man, I don't, not for one of yer 'airships,'" he groused. "Now're either one of you Royal Highnesses gonna buy a drink, or should I scrape the ground first?"

Aberforth watched with narrowed eyes as the taller one gripped the arm of the shorter and forcibly led him away to one of the tables in the darkest corner of the pub. There was a strange bulge below the blond's left shoulder under that cloak; probably a pack of some kind, which naturally led Aberforth's experienced and admittedly embittered mind to start imagining all sorts of scenarios, usually ending in violent sprays of blood and maniacal laughter.

Barkeepers are like priests. They sit around and listen to people bitch and moan about their terrible lives, offer advice, and watch those people promptly ignore said advice. After all, the mass population generally prefers to be pitied than working for anything better. But barkeepers, like priests, know how to keep their mouths shut; at least, until their respective establishments close. After that, it's a free-for-all, and what was once a respectable clergyman or barkeeper suddenly becomes the main attraction at the metaphorical water-cooler.

So Aberforth mentioned the strangers to a curious patron, who then told his cousin, who gabbed to her younger sibling. When the younger sibling went to Hogsmeade after breakfast for some Honeyduke's chocolate, she told old Mr. Honeyduke himself, who shared it with Rosmerta over a pint of butterbeer, and Rosmerta may or may not have said something to several other people, one of whom _coincidentally _happened to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix. And thus it was proved, once again, that small towns like Hogsmeade are like one big bloody quilting circle where you couldn't take a shit without the neighbor noticing.

It was a very efficient quilting circle, too. Not that it got any actual quilting done, of course, but in terms of piecing together personal opinion with rumor, there was no other like it. By the time Dumbledore happened to hear of the pre-dawn arrival of two strangers—a dominatrix of leather and scars and a blood-crazed Azkaban escapee—over his daily ritual of tea and Daily Prophet lies, it was only mid-morning. And being that he wasn't only the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Supreme Mugwump of the Wizengamot, and a host of other stuffy titles but also the head and founder of the aforementioned Order, one might think a man of such import wouldn't have _time_ to mess around with two random people, no matter how _interesting _they might sound.

But it was only June, albeit a very wet one. The school had only let out about a week ago, but Dumbledore had a feeling in his gut about this particular rumor that had nothing to do with the fact that tea is a diarrheic. He cleared his calendar for the day with a negligent wave of his hand and pulled on an eye-bleeding-orange traveling cloak. If nothing else came of this morning, he might at least get a good laugh at the expense of others.

xxx

Cloud looked at the hand on his arm, and then at Leon, with an expression that told the gunblader to remove it immediately or Cloud would do it himself. Permanently.

"You need better self-control." Leon stopped at a two-person table covered in enough grease to slick the _Highwind's_ engines for a year, but it was dark and secluded, which was what really mattered. His own self-control had been tested the moment he heard the words 'royal highnesses' and memories of slick blond hair and a cocky grin fluttered to the surface.

"And you need a proctologist to remove your head," retorted the Zack-voice in Cloud's head. The blond blinked in mute surprise at the words coming out of his mouth without permission, and then gave a long-suffering sigh.

Leon shot him a glare. He'd been around Cloud long enough not to be perturbed when the voices spoke for themselves. "If Tifa hadn't asked that I keep an eye on you—"

"Since when're _you_ so whipped—"

"—wouldn't have to _be_ here—"

"—don't need a fucking _babysitter_—"

"—and what is it with your obsession with Sephiroth?" Leon finished entirely off-topic, somehow managing to keep his voice to a low level.

Cloud was far more powerful than any human had the right to be, but not even he could wish instantaneous death on someone with a glare. Not for lack of trying, though.

"None of your fucking business, _Squall_." Low blow; Leon twitched at his former name. "And that barkeep's drooling for your _man-flower_."

Startled, Leon blinked and glanced at the bar from the corner of his eyes. The white-haired, long-bearded barkeeper was indeed staring at his pants rather creepily.

"…"

Cloud's smirk was unbearably smug.

"…'Man-flower'?" Mental note, thought Leon; assign Yuffie to cleaning duty for the castle toilets. Or better yet, just sacrifice her screaming little ninja-body to the heartless. He very badly wanted to say what was on the tip of his tongue, something about Cloud's own man-flower and the lack thereof, with not-so-subtle references to Sephiroth; but then he remembered how easily Tifa could punch through solid stone walls and he was able to take the higher moral road.

Leon leaned his elbows on the table and let his face plop onto his hands. "No Gummi mechanic, at least around here," he muttered. "Or moogles." The barkeep would've mentioned them instead of those broom-whatsits.

But moogles were _universal_, protested the immature side of him. And they made the _cutest_ noises, kind of like Perdita's puppies when someone accidentally stepped on them.

"What about the PHS in the cockpit?" Cloud was idly doodling death scenes on the greasy tabletop with a golden claw. Neither of them paid attention to the yelling that had broken out by the bar.

"The comm-units got taken out when we hit those heartless." And when he figured out which chipmunk had been responsible for putting the communication console in the _front_ of the damn ship, King Mickey would need to find replacement hangar assistants. Leon suddenly looked up with calculating grey eyes. "Do you have enough of a heart left to sell?"

Cloud kicked him under the table hard enough to fracture a bone. Pity, really. If Cloud had had more to show for being consumed by darkness than a bat wing—like, oh, the ability to open quantum portals through subspace, for instance—then Leon wouldn't have to worry about geriatric fixations on his leather pants. Nor did the blond seemed particularly concerned by their predicament, as though he'd woken up in enough strange places without any memory of how he got there to really care. Being nearly immortal must be nice, Leon mused darkly, what with not having to worry about simple things like _time_ and _death_. Although, it was pretty funny to know that Cloud was older than he was, and yet still got carded at bars.

"Interesting," said a new voice. It was old and crackly like aged paper, but there was no denying the note of kind condescension that comes with living for far too long with a foot in the grave. "Your cloak does not appear to be stained with the blood of your victims."

Cloud and Squall turned as one, like those puppets with the wooden poles stuck through where their spines should be. Leon resisted the urge to scream and throw his arm over his eyes at the sickly-neon-orange spectacle before them by tightening his hand around his gunblade's hilt.

"What do you want?"

The tall old man (who looked disturbingly akin to their barkeeper, come to think of it, and oh _shit_ if that old fucker put his hand anywhere near his trousers he was _so_ dead) spread his arms in a benign gesture.

"You have caused quite the stir in town, and I needed to satisfy the curiosity of a senile old man," he said with a grandfatherly smile that hardly registered with the brunet. Leon didn't have much experience with family except for his father, and Laguna had been a terror of Yuffie's caliber that he wouldn't wish on anyone.

Cloud, for his part, seemed fascinated by the sparkly twinkliness of the man's eyes.

"Do you mind terribly if I draw up a chair?"

Leon was about to tell him that yes, he _did_ mind terribly, and it would be even more terrible if his gunblade slipped and just happened to take off the geezer's head. Complete accident; it could happen to anyone, really. But before he could do much more than part his lips, the old man had pulled a…wand? from the depths of his sleeves and waved it in such a way that it left lines of purple in the air.

In the shape of a chair. Which thudded onto the floor a few seconds later, turning the couple's table into a more crowded trio's.

Well. At least Leon had seen Merlin do similar things, so he wasn't as shocked as he could have been. Yen Sid had the more traditional idea that such idle uses were too undignified for 'olde magik, and don't ye touch mye books, ye bastards.'

"…You're a wizard." Duh.

"Indeed!" the old man smiled broadly. "And yet you do not seem to be a dominatrix at all."

"…What?"

The old man hummed and took a sip from the glowing red drink he'd carried over with him. Leon glanced over the man's shoulder and was relieved, if not slightly suspicious, to see that the attraction of his leather pants apparently couldn't compare to this stranger. The barkeeper was glaring death and unpleasant things at the old man's back; the Bubonic Plague had probably been started with expressions like that and people stepping on puppies.

"So," said the old man obliviously, "what is your current world view on social order?"

It was universally guaranteed that anything containing the word 'social' would be an entirely alien concept to Leon and Cloud. Their eyes met across the table. Leon raised a slender brow, as though asking if Cloud had understood; the blond blinked in incomprehension, both at the man's words and the man himself; then Leon shrugged slightly, as though to say he didn't know what the fuck was going on either, and Cloud shrugged back, perhaps implying that they didn't have anything else to work with and they might as well go with the flow. It was another language between them, a wordless one that arose from men fighting and bleeding and living side-by-side (however reluctantly, and with much bitching, blackmail, and Aerith's testosterone-soothing hot cocoa).

The old man pretended not to notice this strange exchange of spastic twitches, and slurped his drink happily.

When the silence stretched on and it became obvious that Cloud and Leon were perfectly content not to say anything with actual sound, the old man observed, "You two are new to this town."

Leon's expression clearly said, 'No shit. Nothing gets past _you_, does it?'

"Well then, in that case, I will simply have to introduce you to my, ah, colleagues."

This oddly convenient offer of geniality made Leon's eyes narrow. Cloud, who was rather used to things going from bad to oh-fucking-hell-everyone's-dead-and-I've-lost-my-fucking-mind worse, didn't have the gumption anymore to even pretend he cared about this turn of events. Neither Leon's suspicion nor Cloud's apathy were wrong; what they didn't realize was that when Dumbledore got an idea in his head, nothing but the murder of his wee sister would deter him, and she was already dead as a doornail. Dumbledore was _always_ planning something, and no matter how hard they kicked and screamed and threatened to burn down the school, no one could resist his machinations in the end.

Then again, people had said the same thing about Sephiroth, Ultimecia, and Ansem/Xehanort/Mansex/whatever-the-hell-his-name-was-today, and look at what happened to _them_.

Cloud shrugged again. Then without warning, his clawed hand shot out and shattered the tall glass of red something that the old man had been drinking from, never changing the placid unconcern on his pale features. "Poke around in my head again and I'll kill you."

The old man beamed as red drink dripped from his crooked nose. Why, no one knew.

Knowing it was inevitable for the sake of the story, Leon resignedly muttered, "…Whatever."


	2. Chapter 2

Ever wonder how Cedric's death made Harry OOC for a whole year, yet he was over Sirius after a couple weeks?  
More examples of TWT and OOC. Unbetaed. God I love Snape (before Rowling turned him into a Mudblood-lover). I shall be having fun with him later.

* * *

**All Your Base Are Belong to Us  
**_**Hades' Phoenix**_

**2.**

Harry was depressed. This wasn't anything new, though at least he'd managed to refrain from dragging razors across his wrists to alleviate the pain of dreaming about his godfather's death. There was _angst_, a ruse employed by attention-seekers, and then there was _ANGST_, which only the most traumatized of victims could do properly.

_Everyone_ knew a hero had to be a Real Trauma Victim, although seeing Dumbledore terrorize the Dursleys threatened to make Harry break his longest record yet of Scowling Vindictively. However, by the time the headmaster had taken him from the Dursleys, tracked down Slughorn, threatened the corpulent coward with thinly-veiled blackmail, and finally arrived at Grimmauld Place, Harry had managed to sink back into his ANGST with whole-hearted fervor.

Harry wondered why his friends didn't seem to understand that he wasn't angry at _them_. Sure, making Hermione cry and Ron consider ritual suicide was slightly soothing to his irrational fury and grief, but the only thing Harry was really lashing out at was the injustices of the world and his own overwhelming sense of guilt. _Obviously_.

The morning that he nearly incited Ginny into stabbing him with a butter-knife was the morning that Dumbledore strolled into Grimmauld Place, followed by a grand entourage of two people. The shade of his orange cloak made the mounted house-elf heads scream for mercy.

"Good morning," the old man smiled pleasantly, earning a sullen 'hullo' from Ginny and blank looks from everyone else. Harry sneered in response. "We have guests!"

He gestured grandly to the two men. Unimpressed looks were shared all around.

"Albus, who _are _they?" Mrs. Weasley asked, standing in the entrance to the kitchen with a dishrag in her soapy hands.

"I have no idea," Dumbledore informed the room at large, with perhaps more blunt honesty than was strictly comfortable. He turned to the strangers and asked, "Would you two care to introduce yourselves?"

The men looked at the headmaster as though he'd just asked them to strip.

"…Leon," the brunet said flatly.

"…Cloud," the blond followed, just as deadpan. Harry could almost _hear _the barbed wire dragging the sounds from their throats. Then again, with names like ' Leon' and 'Cloud,' Harry would probably be socially retarded too.

The rest of the Weasley family, some Aurors, and Hermione, sitting around the dining room table, appeared at a loss of what to say. Remus (looking haggard and, well, homeless) cleared his throat.

"Where did you find them?" he asked Dumbledore politely, as though Leon and Cloud were stray mangy animals that the old man had dragged in fighting tooth and nail.

"This morning I received a fire-call from Dedalus—he was quite senseless, really, rambling on and on without any relevance to the matter at hand, like the fact that I had been enjoying a rather lovely cup of tea Minerva had specially Conjured for me and I _was_ only halfway through Miss Skeeter's article on Celestina Warbeck's latest scandal—"

Remus cleared his throat again pointedly.

"—and he told me that two _interesting _people had appeared in the Hog's Head," Dumbledore finished, looking pleased with himself. Whether his pleasure came from finding two such apparently fascinating people, or he was just trying to preserve his reputation as the Omniscient Sanctimonious Teacher of the story, no one was really sure. (There were very few people who could understand anything that Dumbledore did; of those people, most were convicted, committed, or dead.)

"You got them from the Hog's Head?" Mr. Weasley repeated weakly.

"But Aberforth—" Mrs. Weasley started.

"Was very accommodating once I explained my purpose," Dumbledore interrupted politely. Harry remembered, in the dim recesses of memory, hearing somewhere of Dumbledore's brother accused of casting inappropriate charms on farmyard animals. This led to creative mental images of Hagrid and his various monstrous pets, and then Harry's brain went on emergency shut-down to prevent permanent damage.

xxx

The space between Cloud's shoulders was itching, as though someone were staring at him and contemplating Very Bad Things. Normally this meant something along the lines of OMGSEPHIROTH, but this sensation came from the room in general and not any one person. Though he managed to maintain his well-practiced impression of a rock, Cloud was, inwardly, feeling quite twitchy. The absolute _weirdness_ of the house—worse even than Merlin's pack-rat hole of a cottage—wasn't helping, even if its occupants looked normal enough.

There was an awkward silence in the room after Dumbledore's words that didn't bother Leon and Cloud in the least. Awkward silences tended to follow whatever _they _said on _any _world, so they were used to it.

Somewhere, a door opened and closed, and then a horrible shrieking mercilessly beat the poor silence to death.

_"BLOOD TRAITORS, DIRTYING THE NOBLE HOUSE OF BLACK! TRAITORS AND THIEVES AND LIARS—" _

Cloud and Leon had their hands on their weapons when the howling turned to screaming and then to a strange gurgling that slowly died away. A tall man with a hooked nose stalked into the room, wearing a bitchier expression than Tifa on the rag.

"Ah, Severus," Dumbledore greeted him smilingly. "I trust you did not hurt Mrs. Black irreparably? I doubt Sirius would have appreciated it."

"Yes, he would've," said the bespectacled kid and the homeless-looking guy at the same time, pained.

"Of course not, Headmaster," the man sneered, as though planning to vivisect the next moron that opened his mouth. Leon bet _he _was the type to kick Dalmatian puppies. "I simply gave the woman a taste of her own potion."

Cloud's right eye developed a tic. Sallow skin and greasy dark hair were giving him unpleasant flashbacks. Beetle-black eyes narrowed calculatingly at the two men, nearly inducing Cloud to start screaming about scientists and reunions and not _wanting _to go back to the mako tank, thank you very much.

"Severus, this is Cloud and Leon." Dumbledore waved at them condescendingly, making Leon tense, while Cloud was too busy having a small existential crisis beside him to notice. "Boys, this is Severus Snape, our resident Potions Master."

"Jack the Ripper in a robe," someone at the dining table stage-whispered.

"The terror of children everywhere," chimed in another.

If Snape heard the mutters—and Leon was sure he had—he ignored them and gave the newcomers a final, dismissive look-over.

"Are they trustworthy, or simply the means for another of your pet projects?"

"Severus, please," said Dumbledore. "Do not make me treat you like a particularly nagging wife." He smiled beatifically. "They are going to be our new Defense professors."

"What?" cried the room.

"What?" Leon demanded, with a vague sense of déjà vu. The tic in Cloud's eye had migrated to his hand, making it look like he was either reaching for a weapon or trying to suppress a sudden case of Tourette's Syndrome.

Dumbledore's smile was patient. It was the kind of smile that kindergarten teachers wore when their students were yelling like monkeys and throwing paint on the walls. "With your Gummi ship grounded and no convenient mechanic in the region, I felt that I would offer you room, board, and occupation while my contacts sought an answer to your dilemma."

When had this been decided? Leon didn't remember having this kind of conversation, and he didn't bother asking Cloud, because Cloud routinely forgot that he wasn't an inanimate object. There was a reason Leon had been made a mercenary commander while still a minor; he was more than capable of finding his _own_ answers, damn it, and no amount of twinkling or grandfatherly benevolence would convince him otherwise.

"When was this decided?" he said aloud, inadvertently releasing some of Shiva's power. The temperature in the room dropped slightly, and if it were possible the brunet's words would've pierced the old man with razor-edged icicles.

Intrigue flickered through the headmaster's eyes before they were wise and twinkly once more.

"I thought I would save you the time and effort it would take for two such as yourselves to procure the essentials, and besides, I have favors owed to me that greatly increase your chance of success. Gummi blocks are, after all, something entirely unknown to us."

Leon had already resolved that the man's appeal to pride wouldn't work on him.

"How do you know it's Gummi blocks we need?" he challenged. He didn't remember that conversation, either.

"Head poking," Cloud muttered distractedly. Leon waited with forced patience for him to elaborate, and received, "He's…telepathic. Or something. Zack wasn't too happy."

Which translated to Dumbledore having tried to read Cloud's mind but failing miserably, probably because the voices in Cloud's head hadn't appreciated the intrusion on their exclusive office party. Leon, not having the same experience in being consistently mind-fucked, probably wouldn't have noticed if the old man had tried to read _his_.

"…Really." His voice was flat. Shiva hummed with bloodthirsty happiness and, through their Junction link, provided him with lovely images of all the terrible things ice could do to human flesh. Especially wrinkly old-man flesh, and no one would miss a self-righteous old bastard that called grown men his 'boys,' right?

Snape was looking at Cloud like he would dog shit on the bottom of his shoe; disgusted and slightly confused, waiting for it to come alive and bite him before he managed to scrape it off. Without turning away, he said, "Headmaster, I assure you that my presence here is not due to a sudden need to mingle with the witless proletariat. I need to speak with you on a matter that _cannot_ wait."

His eyes flicked to his own left forearm, then to Dumbledore. The old man didn't seem to hear the dripping edge of sarcasm in the voice of his Potions Master.

"Of course, Severus, my dear," he agreed. "Boys, you simply have not lived until you have tried Molly's exquisite coffee cake."

He was drifting out of the room as he spoke, followed by an obviously suspicious Snape. Everyone in the kitchen was left feeling rather bewildered at the morning's unexpected surprises, and secretly questioning if the stress had finally snapped their beloved leader.

"Well then," said Molly, ever the peacemaker, "sit down, you two, and help yourselves." She bustled into the kitchen all a-fluster.

Leon and Cloud blinked and stared at the silent table. Judging from the light coming in through a window, it was barely late morning, but Leon was having issues trying to figure out how they went from crash-landing their Gummi ship to being contracted as professors so quickly, without any input of their own.

"Is it just me," Cloud muttered, "or does this world feel…"

"Contrived?" Leon supplied dryly. "No, it's just you."

xxx

The itchiness between Cloud's shoulders abated slightly as time went on, just enough to make him feel that he wouldn't shimmy right out of his own skin. He had to resist the urge to scratch his wing under the cloak against the chair he sat in, other people's sense of what wasn't human be _damned_.

Cloud wasn't under many illusions about himself anymore. He knew very well that he was bat-fuck crazy—he should know, he had to live himself most of the time, except when he forgot to tell himself where he was going—but he didn't think pointing out the flashing lights that romped around this strange wizarding manor would make Leon very happy.

…Heh.

"The house is shiny," he said under his breath to the scowling, cranky brunet. Leon was poking at the plate that the fussy woman had shoved in front of him in what _he _would've called an intellectual brood, and what everyone else called a sulk. "The Dark is strong here. But sparkly."

Leon's fork scraped painfully against the plate, making the Zack-voice do a jig of malicious glee. Generally, Cloud couldn't be bothered responding to his fellow species, but there was something _satisfying _in pissing Leon off. He blamed it on Zack, whose favorite pastime was seeing how far he could push Sephiroth before the general tried to skewer him on the Masamune.

At the angry screech of silverware on porcelain, the other people at the table leaned away from them warily.

"Defense, then?" said the homeless-looking guy in a strained but polite voice, and the slightly amber glow of his eyes made Cloud wonder what kind of materia he must've overdrawn to get that effect. There was something extra-sparkly about him. "What do you two specialize in?"

Cloud had already lost interest in the conversation. After a moment, Leon muttered tightly, "Tactics. Mercenary warfare."

The wariness turned to alarm.

A dark-haired kid with glasses gave a scowl, and it was almost as good as Leon's. There was something extra-sparkly around him, too, only it was a Dark sort of shininess that made Cloud's eyes narrow. "_Now_ Dumbledore's going to take Voldemort seriously?"

"_Harry_," said the fussy woman sternly.

"Who's Voldemort?" Cloud wondered aloud, thinking it sounded like the sort of crappy villain-name that Zack would've come up with. It sounded as cheesy as 'Prozac' or 'Zoloft,' before he remembered that those were a few names of the myriad pills that Tifa was always trying to slip into his food.

After another silence, which was stunned rather than awkward, he learned that Voldemort was the name of a guy who was, for lack of a better comparison, like a more stupid Sephiroth on a spree for world domination. At least Sephiroth had been defeated the first time around by a teenager, not an _infant_, which was marginally less lame on the Misunderstood-God-Complex Meter.

Voldemort, thought Cloud, rolling the word around in his hollow head. Guaranteed to eliminate any remaining sense of childhood. Side-effects may include insanity and a horribly agonizing death.

At least the Dark light hovering over the boy was explained.

"Why do your eyes glow?" asked a frizzy-haired young woman, leaning forward in academic interest with her gaze fixed on him.

"Mako."

She looked at him in confusion, but if she didn't know what that was, then Cloud wasn't going to enlighten her.

"A type of magic," Leon explained in the tone of voice that revealed he would say just about anything if it meant the other person would just _go away_.

"Is it something that anyone can learn?" the bespectacled boy—Harry Potter, if Cloud had heard the story right—demanded.

"No." There wasn't any arguing with Leon when he sounded like _that_.

Potter sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, muttering, "Then what use is it against Voldemort? No one's been able to do anything to him, except Dumbledore, and things are just getting worse and no one's _telling _anyone _anything_. Not even Sirius—"

"Was this Sirius burned to death?" Cloud asked suddenly.

Harry blinked and shook his head.

"Was he shot multiple times?"

"No!"

"Was he run through with a sword? Tortured into madness? Sold his soul to the Dark and reduced to something inhuman? Watched as every person on his world was torn to shreds and lost their hearts to the Darkness?"

"_No!_"

"Then things aren't bad yet. Shut up."

Ooh, there was another sparkly, emitted by the slender stick of wood that the fussy woman's husband thought he was doing a good job of hiding in his pocket. Cloud couldn't help watching it, faintly reminded of the hearts that floated away from bodies consumed by Darkness and wondering if it was the Darkness in his own body that made it look so irresistible. He didn't realize that Leon was looking at him with something akin to amusement, if the man had been capable of it, or that Harry was gaping like someone had slapped him across the face with a dead fish.

Maybe, Harry thought, looking more closely and seeing the slight vacancy in the strange blond's gaze, that flipping out on everyone _wasn't _the best way to deal with his grief. And perhaps that it was one thing to be a Real Trauma Victim, and another thing entirely to allow a hero's ANGST to turn from being a reason into being an excuse.

(And if these two really were going to share the Defense post, then there'd be enough arsehole-ness going around without Harry adding to it.)

So it was that barely two weeks after his godfather's death, Harry finally sucked up his OOC-ness and got his act together.

Dear Merlin, everyone silently mused, _finally. _

xxx

Leon was off arguing with Dumbledore, so Cloud was amusing himself by holding a staring contest with the house-elf heads in the foyer. He was winning when a carrot-headed girl popped out of the woodwork, quite literally, next to him.

"Hi," she said cheerfully, and something about her reminded Cloud of Aerith's mischievousness and Tifa's ferocity. It made a very male part of him shrivel and cry out for mercy. "I don't know who the bloody hell you are, but thanks for making Harry realize what an absolute _arse _he can be."

Cloud just shrugged and scratched the itch between his shoulders without looking away from the glassy eyes in font of him. The elf didn't stand a chance.


	3. Chapter 3

Dear Lord, with the number of positive reviews this piece of crap is getting, I feel like I can't _not _update. Manipulative bastards. (But thanks for the reviews. XD)

**All Your Base Are Belong to Us**  
_**Hade's Phoenix**_

**III.**

Strands of blackened skin hung down in tatters over bleached white bone, and hooves like dark stone were unnaturally silent against the ground. They seemed to flow rather than walk, behaving more like pools of shadow than corporeal matter.

Leon and Cloud stopped and looked at the thestrals. Cloud saw them, and thought that maybe they were the bastard lovechildren of Hojo or Snape; Leon saw them, and thought that maybe he'd suddenly found God.

Dumbledore and Snape paused and looked back, wondering why the other two had paused at the edge of Hogwarts' grounds. Both were staring at the herd of thestrals grazing innocently at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, one in abject disgust and the other ready to fall to his knees in ecstasy.

"Headmaster," said Snape very calmly, when the besotted expression didn't immediately leave Leonhart's normally blank face, "if I am forced to witness those things that only the most depraved of Death Eaters would do to an animal, and of which I can only suspect Hagrid, then I _will _kill you. Painfully. And no one will ever know what became of your corpse."

But Leon couldn't _help_ it. Dalmatian puppies were cute and all, but he'd lived with a goddess of ice and death in the back of his head since he hit puberty, and…well, no one ever accused him of being a very normal person anyway. Rinoa certainly hadn't; for some reason, his showing up for dinner at a nice restaurant without first taking a shower to wash off the enemy's blood had made her scream shrilly in horror. He didn't understand why a Sorceress would mind, especially since other SeeDs couldn't care less, _and _he'd been careful not to stain the table linens.

"Pretty," he murmured, a little dazedly. It took Cloud giving him a strange look—and when _Cloud _gave you a strange look, then you really knew you were doing something fucked up—to make Leon shake his head and come back to his senses.

"Those are thestrals," said Dumbledore from behind Leon's shoulder. The brunet twitched but didn't bother wondering anymore how the man knew what he was thinking or how he seemed to just randomly appear. "Only those who have seen death can see them as well. Many people consider them ill omens, but I believe Hagrid treats them as a rather odd species of fuzzy pet. This one is Cupcake."

Cloud could feel the wing on his shoulder shifting as though it had a mind of its own, no doubt the Darkness in his body reacting to these Avatars Of Death And Horribly Dark Horrors. He took a few steps away from the eerily silent herd towards the castle rising from the land beside a huge lake, and abruptly felt a sizzling shock like a Bolt spell.

"OWFUCKSHIT!"

Without thinking, one of the evil presences in his head reached out for the Darkness in his heart and _twisted_, making the world tilt precariously for a split second. Then he stumbled inelegantly backwards as the Zack-voice snickered away merrily, several meters from where he'd been shocked.

"Mr. Strife, my dear boy, I did not realize you were so sensitive to magic," Dumbledore smiled, but Cloud didn't miss the expression of interest so like the one he'd worn when Leon had put on his little ice show at the Black manor. "The wards on this side of the castle extend to right about where we are now standing. I believe that was Hogwarts' way of greeting you."

Cloud silently fumed about stupid sentient buildings and if there were going to be chattering candelabras and scowling clocks then he was going to Omnislash their copper-plated asses.

"Strife," Leon was saying very carefully, as though measuring his words to find the best place to kill with them, "you said you couldn't teleport anymore."

"No I didn't." It came out more defensively than he would've liked.

"That's what you told Tifa."

"Only so she wouldn't keep trying to wrap my head in warm towels."

Thestrals entirely forgotten, Leon stalked forward (shivering a little as he passed the alleged line of wards) and twisted a hand in Cloud's red cloak to pull him dangerously close.

"You didn't think to mention this before?"

Cloud shrugged. "You didn't ask."

Leon's eyes became very, very narrow, until they were little more than blue-grey slits of fury. "And you didn't think of teleporting to, say, _Radiant Garden_, where there's a _mechanic _with _Gummi blocks?_"

The thing about My-Name-Is-Leon-Not-Squall was that the angrier he became, the more condescending and varied his tone was. The fact that his words had lost their typically flat quality meant he'd sped way past anger and gone straight to Apocalyptic Rage. If the bastard were a Summons, Cloud mused as he forcibly removed Leon's hand from Vincent's cloak, it'd be the name of an attack, like 'Painful Social Ineptitude' and 'Hot Ass But Emotionally Unavailable.'

"I can't do _big_ teleports anymore," Cloud snapped. If the self-righteous bastard had bothered to think about it, he would've realized that possessing the single demon wing meant the Darkness hadn't yet entirely left him. Duh. "Just little ones. Forgive me if I've been trying to break Sephiroth's control. Since, you know, being someone's slave kind of _sucks_."

Some of Cloud's words made Leon have a sudden flashback to his sea-side orphanage, when a four-year-old Zell had gone to Matron and declared with all the little-boy pride he could muster, '_Matron, I made a __**big **__poo!' _Of the few memories Shiva could've left him with, it figures that would be one of them.

xxx

Hogwarts made Beast's Castle look like the epitome of a proper Edwardian manor. Forget the copper-plated talking clocks and candelabras. Paintings gossiped and empty suits of armor clanked about, and even a poltergeist cackled insanely as he uselessly chucked peanut butter at the two professors and two professors-to-be; staircases shifted and walls were ticklish and he could swear that the flagstones were complaining about the men's boots. If Cloud thought Grimmauld Place had been bad, the itch between his shoulders felt like it was expanding to a full-body outbreak of hives.

Leon had refused to look at him since they entered the castle. Sulking prick.

It's the mako, he figured as he followed Dumbledore up several flights of stairs. Only hard-trained reflexes kept from falling through trick steps. No doubt the mako in his body was reacting to all this unrestrained magic and amplifying the voices in his head to full-blown running commentary.

_Oi, didn't anyone tell that chick that horizontal stripes make her painting look fat?_

_Shut up, Zack._

"Headmaster," Snape had said earlier with an audible sneer, "I'll be in my laboratory." He'd given the two newcomers an evil look, one that made Cloud sneer back and accidentally-on-purpose show off the slight fangs that the Darkness had given him. Snape had quickly disappeared to the dungeons as though someone had lit a fire on his ass.

_Amateur, to be frightened by a failed specimen. I wonder how the effects of mako might be altered through his potions—?_

Cloud promptly strangled that thought. Dangerous, dangerous territory, full of the dark and screaming things that the Zack-voice kept tied down for him. Damn the mako and the magic.

When he brought his mind back to the present he found that he was standing in a circular office in front of Dumbledore's desk, behind which the old man had already sat down. The blond didn't bother questioning the minor hiccup of time.

"Red or green?" the headmaster asked them, gesturing for the men to sit on cushy armchairs. Even for Cloud, the question was startlingly random.

"Why?" Leon demanded at the same time Cloud said, "Red."

(He'd learned early on that the color green tended to herald those Very Bad Things.)

"I thought it might be rather fun to Sort the two of you. And, of course, there is almost no chance that either of you would end up in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff—you both have actual personalities. Therefore, we are left with Slytherin and Gryffindor, and the question arises…red or green?"

"Does this have any relevance to our Gummi ship, our being marooned here, or the apparent teaching positions you've forced us into?" Leon asked suspiciously. Dumbledore looked on the verge of patting him on the head like a pet that'd performed a neat trick.

"Not in the least."

He handed over a heavily patched conical hat, and Leon took it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. He was the sort of man who kicked the handle of a public toilet rather than risk touching it, and this hat was offending every bit of neurotic tendency for cleanliness that he possessed. Blood was one thing, and something every mercenary (but not Sorceresses, apparently) learned to live with; but a hat that looked like it'd survived an accessory store massacre and several parasite epidemics was too much. He passed it over to Cloud, who looked at it, shrugged prosaically, and pulled it over his spiky hair.

"Oh my," the hat murmured aloud. Dumbledore and even Leon, despite himself, leaned forward to listen to its mutters. "What do we have here?"

_What are you? _Cloud wondered.

"I'm the Sorting Hat—"

_What the fuck? Oi, that's not right._

"Who are—" the Hat started.

_People talk. Hojo's experiments talk. Chocobos, uh, wark, but that's close enough. Hats were just invented to hide shitty haircuts. _

"How—"

_It's like having your underwear talk._

_Zack, I don't wear underwear on my head._

_You do when you're drunk. Or maybe that was me._

"If you would just—"

_Besides—what's with all the head-poking? I swear to Holy it's like everyone thinks Cloud's head is a free-for-all. I resent that, you know. There might be a lot of space in here, but I need it to stretch my legs. So to speak._

"I'm not—"

_Kid's blond, he can't help it. Maybe it's the face—if you weren't so damn cute, kiddo, maybe you wouldn't have this problem. It's the whole shoot-me-I'm-just-that-unbearably-adorable-and-wide-eyed thing you've got going, it's like mating pheromones for sociopaths and serial killers and creepy Japanese businessmen._

_Zaaack!_

"I don't think—"

_Too bad I'm dead or I would've volunteered my protective services. All I'd require in return is servicing of my own, you get what I'm saying? I mean, it's been, what, fifteen years since I last got laid? Serious case of blue-balls here, man. I'm gonna explode if I don't get it taken care of._

_Maybe it's penance for all the times you should've kept it in your pants, asshole._

_Hey, it's a serious medical condition!_

"Merlin's sake, Albus, how do you expect me to Sort him when I can't get a word in edgewise?"

The headmaster blinked. "What do you mean?"

"It's like trying to reason with a group of first-years with the perversions of old men!"

_Hey, I was only twenty-three when I died, you rank piece of yesterday's fashion. I was in my fucking _prime_, man! I should be having a hundred kids and a thousand grandkids running about my knees and wreaking havoc with Cloud and Sephiroth's antisocial little heads by now._

The thought of Zack managing to procreate made Cloud shudder.

"Rank piece of—?"

_If I had a body, I'd pull down my pants and show you which head you can cover, you dusty conglomeration of rummage-sale cast-offs!_

"How dare you! I was worn by Godric Gryffindor himself—"

_Who probably died shoving his own wand up his ass, you glorified cunt-rag_.

Leon and Dumbledore watched from the sidelines as the Sorting Hat got worked up into a frenzy and Cloud's expression alternated between amusement and horror.

"I wonder, my dear boy—" Leon twitched at the appellation, "—is your friend possessed?"

No, he just talked to dead people. But… "Yes. Yes, he is."

"Ah. Fascinating."

…if it kept the old man from asking awkward questions, who was Leon to argue the finer points between the occult and schizophrenia?

When the Hat appeared to be in the process of attempting to wriggle off Cloud's head and wrap itself around his throat, Dumbledore wisely plucked the thing away and stowed it back onto its shelf.

"I have _never _been so _insulted_ in my thousand years of Sorting—"

_Congratulations_, thought Cloud flatly, _you have officially proven your immaturity to rival ten centuries' worth of children._

_Dude. I so totally rock._

"I think, perhaps, that we should forego a Sorting and claim it a draw," the headmaster said delicately. Considering they had no real idea what was going on, the two mercenaries didn't particularly give a shit about missing out on what was evidently a time-honored tradition that began in childhood and produced sophomoric prejudices that lasted well into adulthood.

The Hat continued muttering to itself on its shelf. Cloud eyed it warily.

_Zack, I think you broke it._

"I think we will save our discussion for teatime of another day," the headmaster went on blithely. "As soon as Argus comes—ah! Here he is now."

The office door opened and a distinctly unpleasant man, second only to Snape, lurched into the office.

"Igor," Cloud said without thinking. "It lives!"

Three pairs of confused eyes turned to him.

_He's not a humpback, Doc,_ Zack informed him helpfully, and somewhat uncharacteristically, Cloud flushed. What was it about this place that made the words bypass the brain's edit function and go straight to his mouth? In his defense, this Argus man really did look like an Igor, albeit one that could stand up relatively straight.

Maybe he was the Igor to Snape's Hojo, and was Cloud really sure that lightning hadn't been involved in that whole five-years-of-absolute-hellish-torture, oh-what-happens-when-I-cut-_this_-tendon time period?

_Stop thinking, kiddo, it'll be safer for all involved._

"Argus, these men are Professors Strife and Leonhart, both of whom will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. Would you be so kind as to show them to the teacher's wing?"

Argus looked kind enough to take a blunt object to their kneecaps, but he hobbled out of the office with a minimum of grumbling and threats of bodily harm.

"Behave," Leon muttered as he passed Cloud, which prompted a variety of instinctual reactions. One was to protest on the grounds that he couldn't help it if the voices decided to speak for themselves, it wasn't like they ever asked for _his _opinion; the second was to kick the presumptuous, sulky bastard down the twisting stairwell and watch his pretty face go splat on the flagstones.

_Woot, dibs on the Shiva Summons!_

In the end, Cloud did neither, but he silently promised to stand in the dark with Ultima unsheathed in Leon's bedroom and see how much Balamb's Lion could scream like a little girl.


	4. Chapter 4

**All Your Base Are Belong to Us  
**_**Hades' Phoenix**_

**IV. **

Leon was not a happy camper. Normally this wouldn't be anything new, but his default personality setting was usually a more general discontent with the world—not this foot-stomping must-shoot-something-_now_ fit of pathos.

Waking up in a bedroom lit by pre-dawn to Cloud standing over him with that goddamn oversized pig-sticker, demonic wing outstretched, hadn't helped. If Dumbledore wondered why the furniture in their shared suite had to be replaced a day after their arrival, then the headmaster could deal with Cloud and the fucking psychotic voices himself.

Maybe it wasn't fair of Leon to react so strongly. After all, from the little hints dropped by Aerith, Tifa, and Yuffie, Cloud hadn't led a particularly happy life even before Sephiroth developed his creepy obsession; it was like fate had given the kid a Luck Plus materia stuck to a Doom spell with chewed gum and duct tape. Being stranded on this gods-forsaken world with people that couldn't magic-spell their heads out of their asses probably only stressed an already fractured mind. So if Cloud couldn't resist the evil temptations of the dead people whispering in his head, it wasn't _really _his fault.

…Bullshit.

"_Diamond Dust!"_

Cloud tucked himself down and rolled behind the battered sofa, letting Shiva's shards of ice slice into the cushions and fling feathers into the air like fake snow.

"Diamonds are a girl's best friend, Leonhart!" he yelled, activating the Fire materia in his bangle. The Fire3 burst through Shiva's defenses and sent her back to wherever it was the Summons went after a battle.

"Fucking go die in a goddamned fucking corner!" Leon snarled—_he had __**not**__ screamed like a fucking little girl!_—and raced across the living room towards Cloud's sofa. It was probably a good thing that the rooms they'd been given as professors were larger on the inside than on the outside.

They both knew that Leon didn't have much of a chance of taking down someone like Cloud, but it was the principle of the fight that mattered. Who really cared about those common sense things when mindless destruction was involved?

Cloud had tried explaining that his whole monster-in-the-dark impersonation wasn't his fault; it was _Leon's _fault, obviously, for being such a dick in the first place. And it could have been worse. At least he hadn't been that ancient barkeeper with the leather fetish, sneaking in for a good molesting grope. Not that Cloud had wanted to molest Leon at all, because sharing barracks with Zack for two years had made him well-acquainted with said nighttime assaults, but it was the thought that counted. There were times when the knowledge that things could always get worse that was the only thing keeping Cloud from mixing sleeping pills with liquor, but with _his _luck, not even that would kill a super-mako-enhanced SOLDIER.

See, Leon's problem was that he never lived in the present. Maybe that was because he could actually remember things from more than three days ago, but it also meant that he tended to brood about things like names and stupid chipmunks that couldn't build Gummi ships for shit. Or it simply meant that he overreacted.

Like now.

LionHeart cleaved through the sofa and would have continued through Cloud's head if he hadn't blocked it with the clawed glove he wore. Perhaps ducking behind the couch hadn't been his best idea, because he was now stuck between a rock wall and a…well, a hard place. Zack practically had an aneurysm of glee over the potential innuendos concerning gunblades and hard places.

So. Suffice it to say, Leon was not a happy camper, and when he learned that the new school year didn't start until _September first_ and that he and Cloud would be trapped in the school for almost _three months_, his fury reached whole new heights. When Cloud muttered something concerning anger and support groups, part of Hogwarts' funds had to be used for the reconstruction of the northern fifth-floor wing.

But however much Cloud pissed off Leon and Leon irritated the shit out of Cloud, it was left unsaid that they stood united before a common enemy that proved more insidious than either could have believed.

English wizardry.

Merlin might be in the habit of absently forgetting his slippers in the microwave, but he still _did _things. _Useful _things, it must be stressed, because Dumbledore and his merry cohorts also did things—they just didn't make any fucking sense. This was never more apparent than in the meeting they had with the headmaster to discuss the year's syllabus for Defense Against the Dark Arts.

A _syllabus_. Leon had to write a goddamn syllabus like a kindergarten teacher. For the first time, he truly repented for all the hell he'd put Quistis through as her student, and decided that she should've been sainted for not putting her boot up Seifer's ass on the first day.

"This is…" he started faintly, looking over the list of topics covered by their predecessors in previous years.

"Well, it is hardly the fault of the children that their lessons are often disrupted," Dumbledore said. "Sometimes there are circumstances beyond one's control, and it seems that this post in particular is prone to coincidence."

"…Coincidence." Four professors in as many years being killed, memory-wiped, run out of out town, or turning traitor. Yes. Coincidence. Mere happenstance. Just like there being no conspiracy behind six or seven orphans separated in childhood and being reunited at the moment the world needed their unique skills.

"Indeed." Butter wouldn't have melted in the old man's mouth.

Cloud, meanwhile, was looking over Leon's shoulder at the syllabus and thinking about how Voldemort and his forces were so terrifying they couldn't kill off a group of students barely into their teens. This was oddly disappointing. Sephiroth himself had conquered an entire country before he hit puberty.

"What are you expecting us to teach?" Leon demanded. Neither he nor Cloud knew what a stupid 'grindylow' was, and yet Dumbledore wouldn't have dragged them into this without _something _planned. It would, no doubt, turn out to be quite humiliating.

"Well, what are you good at?"

"Killing people," the two mercenaries replied simultaneously.

"Ah, I believe the parents would not look upon such lessons very kindly," said the headmaster thoughtfully. "Young Mr. Potter was quite the teacher in magical Defense, but I fear that we wizards fall short in physical combat. Many are rendered helpless if they lose their wand. Perhaps you two might focus on the more mundane methods of self-defense?"

"It's Defense Against the Dark Arts, not Defense Against Human Nature." Teach a class with magic in the title and not even _use _magic?

"…I find that to be quite cynical, Mr. Strife."

Maybe someone who lived in a land of perpetual sunshine and puppies would think so. Personally, Cloud called it 'realistic.'

And so for the next three months, the two misplaced men waged a silent defensive war against the rest of this particular world. Leon developed the habit of harassing Dumbledore at precisely four in the morning and six in the evening every day. (Why so early in the morning? It wasn't because Leon was a morning person, and was in fact pretty much grumpy throughout the entire twenty-four-hour cycle. No, it was because he knew that when you pester people enough before the sun rises, you can usually get them to promise you their first-born child.)

"Have you found the Gummi blocks?"

"I'm sorry, Leon."

"…Have you found them now?"

"No, Leon."

"…What about now?"

"I assure you, Mr. Leonhart, that when Gummi blocks are located, you will be the first to know."

After about a month of this, Professor McGonagall commented on how Albus was looking rather peaky lately, did he need to take some time off? It was, perhaps, the first time that Leon and Cloud had ever seen the headmaster flustered. They treasured the sight, mentally filing it away to look at when murdering the man seemed like the only option.

Leon also adopted the habit of disappearing around midnight every night, until Cloud confronted him about it.

"Who're you fucking every night?" he asked, not looking up from sharpening Ultima's blade. The fact that the sword could already split the split-ends of a hair was a dead giveaway of the blond's restlessness.

"No one."

"_What _are you fucking?"

"…Go throw yourself at a wall, schizo-boy."

It should be noted that even while cursing one another, these two could maintain the same level tone as if speaking about the weather, or politely inquiring as to one's health.

"Fuck you, _Squall_."

"And not wait up for Sephiroth to join us? You whore."

Thus battle was joined, and Dumbledore was forced to ask that if they couldn't keep their pointy objects to themselves then take it outside, please, they were already straining Hogwarts' renovation budget.

Of course, Leon wasn't actually fucking anyone, or any_thing_, for that matter. Instead he was sneaking down to the Forbidden Forest to quietly watch the thestrals, finding a sort of tranquility in their burning eyes and skeletal, flesh-draped corpses. Shiva would hum in the back of his head happily, and he would ponder all the Deep Unanswerable Questions Of The Universe.

Cloud, for his own part, didn't just obsessive-compulsively clean his weapons. While Leon was off being creepy with the dead things or driving the already ancient headmaster to a sooner grave, the blond's morbid fascination drew him downwards.

To the dungeons.

Where Snape dwelled.

_Come into my lair_, Zack cackled as Cloud perched near the upper arches of a dungeon ceiling. He had his wing exposed and curled in front of him to conceal the red of his cloak, but he couldn't help the glow of his eyes as he watched Snape stalk around the room. The dungeons were dank and gloomy and full of rotting things in jars; seeing a piglet with only half a skull suspended in a glass of something electric green made him shudder in sickened sympathy.

"_Imbeciles_," the Potions Master was snarling, voice as oily as his hair echoing strangely in the stone room. "Saying they have no wolfsbane but sending me monkshood—may those moronic _fools _pray that I never find them or I will string them from the battlements by their _viscera_—"

_Who lit the fuse on __**his**__tampon? _stage-whispered Zack. Why Zack was stage-whispering when no one but Cloud could hear him only he could possibly understand.

Now, Snape had been having a very bad day. Week, more like. (But as long as we're getting specific, it could be said that his whole life had been one fabulous fuck-up, but that's just splitting hairs.) It was more than just his potions suppliers not realizing that two of their products were the _same thing_ and therefore making his job more complicated, but it wasn't the details that mattered at this point in time. What mattered was the eventual intersection of two futures, thereby becoming a single event and one hell of an 'oh shit' moment.

Consider the fact that Snape had reflexes sharply honed by years of Death Eaterhood, paranoia, and dodging the caustic explosions of inept human spawn. It didn't take long for the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end, and after oh-so-casually making sure there wasn't anything explosive or acidic nearby, he suddenly whirled around with a hissed, _"Stupefy!"_

He'd considered a Killing Curse, but dead assassins didn't tell tales. What he got, though, wasn't an assassin but a lurking Cloud, who had seen the red bolt of magic and reacted out of blind instinct. Barely a nanosecond after the Stunner went flying a Fire spell was torn out of the blond's materia-slotted bracer, and with a great _WHOOSH_ several thousand pounds' worth of shriveled plants and dissected animal parts went up in flames.

Snape wasted several precious seconds just staring in abject disbelief. His _potions, _his _ingredients_, his _journals_ were swiftly being consumed, adding to the growing roar of the fire—and oh shit they were in a closed room underground while noxious things went up in smoke and he was going to die, wasn't he?

"GET OUT!" he screamed, dropping as low as he could to avoid the swiftly forming ceiling of smoke while still being able to scuttle awkwardly for the door. Halfway there, it seemed the fire had reached the cabinet of bottled Dragon's Breath; the entire castle shook on its foundations with the resulting explosion, and Snape would have been reduced to flambéed cranky-bitter-man if something hadn't dropped out of the metaphorical sky and wrapped itself protectively around him.

"_Shut up, Zack!_" the Something yelled, as another something-black-and-scaly put itself between them and the huge Fireball of Nasty Death. When the sudden burst of unbearable heat died down a little, Snape found himself dragged towards the door with inhuman speed like a sack of potatoes and tossed unceremoniously into the hallway. His savior turned back around to the open door (it was incredibly surreal, to be sitting on one's arse in a dark corridor and see a blazing inferno in an adjoining room) and cast some kind of spell that produced a watery deluge from—absolutely nowhere.

There was a long moment of silence that made his ears ring.

"You alive?" said a voice dryly, and it took Snape a moment to realize that the Something was really Cloud Strife. Not that it really mattered _who_ it was at this point.

"Perhaps," he began silkily, "you might begin by explaining what your puerile mind thought to do in a laboratory full of very caustic, very lethal items. After that, we will progress to the extreme likelihood of my joyfully seeing your body and soul writhe in eternal agony."

What might have followed would make virgins swoon and mothers cover their children's eyes if Dumbledore hadn't chosen to interrupt their little moment with his usual flair for timing. (The same timing that made him conveniently absent every time a young boy was pitted against the Worst Dark Lord Of Contemporary Time; the kind of timing that made the more discerning critics scream _conspiracy _or _deus ex machina!_) Leonhart trailed behind him like a sullen, homicidal shadow, a strange bladed weapon in hand,

"And here I thought separating Cloud and Leon would lessen the damage. Do I need to put you two on time-out?"

Snape quivered with fury.

"He started it," Strife said flatly, and the Potions Master whirled around with the fires of Hell in his dark eyes.

"You walking viral abnormality, I will _flay you open _and reduce your defective body into its most _basic_ mitochondrial structure—at least I know you're already _halfway there_, the bloody missing link between humans and feces-flinging apes—"

But Snape had forgotten about the black-and-scaly Something that had protected himself and Strife from a blast of flames; now it popped out again to say hello, promptly sending him speechless.

"…Oh my," Dumbledore murmured at the black bat-wing twitching irritably at the blond's shoulder. The red cloak had slipped to one side in all the excitement. "Fascinating, really. Was your mother a succubus, perhaps?"

Leonhart made a _snerk_ sound. The other mercenary looked at Dumbledore as though mentally willing the old man's heart to explode on the spot.

"Succubus or not," Snape purred velvet-soft, "you are now _mine_."

"Now really, Severus—"

Having edged around the two wizards, Leon clamped a hand onto Cloud's normal arm and forcibly pulled him towards the dimly lit stairs. "Come on," he hissed.

"A moment of humanity?" Cloud muttered acidly under his breath, tugging back his limb but still following.

"No. If anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me."

"…It's not my fault you scream like a girl."

xxx

With the power of omniscient third-person narrative, two more months passed. By the time September first rolled around, Hogwarts was barely being held together by numerous spells and a few prayers for good luck. Snape had been trying to slip a potion into Cloud's drink that would turn his body inside out—"scientific research," the Master had explained to a disapproving headmaster. Leon had harassed Dumbledore until the man's hair and beard were a new shade of white, and nearly driven the poor thestrals into getting a restraining order against his habit of nighttime stalking. Cloud, when not hanging around the dungeons and scaring the shit out of Snape, alternately got into fights with the gargoyles or Leon himself, and the two mercenaries together had caused nearly an entire reconstruction of the western half of the castle.

Then the students came.

"_Nyum-nyum_," Cloud hummed aloud from his perch on the third floor windowsill, watching the hordes of robed midgets stream from the carriages. Leon ignored him, too busy staring blankly out the window and twitching at the thought of all those…_children._

Rinoa had once tried to convince him they should have children. Leon told her he'd rather have a frontal lobotomy, and maybe he should get a turn on the rack while he was at it for a sort of two-in-one-torture deal.

"Abandon all hope, you who enter," the brunet muttered. 

Crouched like a predator beside him, Cloud smiled darkly. "Wizards?"

"Idiots," Leon replied immediately.

"Students?"

"Idiots we're being held liable for." 

"Got any lesson plans?"

"'Survive.'"

Cloud canted him a sly look. "…Loser wears a thong for his respective arch-nemesis. And I don't care if Seifer's only fifteen."

"You're on, jailbait."


End file.
